September 08, 2024

Curtain Call for the Ticket Mafia


Curtain Call for the Ticket Mafia
Worth the price of admission? Wikimedia Commons, DmitriyGuryanov.

An organized crime ring of 150 people has been convicted in a Moscow district court. Their crime? Event ticket fraud.

The organization, made up of fraudsters, IT specialists, and website designers, created fake duplicate websites for popular cultural venues, like the Bolshoi and Maly Theaters and Tchaikovsky Conservatory. These sites sold real tickets at inflated prices, passing the difference on to the scammers.

Over more than a decade, the crime ring skimmed off more than a billion rubles ($11.3 million) through their scam. Their scheme was so good that sales on the real websites practically ceased, which is what triggered an investigation in 2020, leading to the criminals' arrest.

The ringleader received a sentence of seven and a half years in prison, while other participants were either jailed for shorter periods or given suspended sentences.

 

 

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